World Pullup Day & Street Workout Meeting – Romania 2017

About World Pullup Day

World Pullup Day has its background in Latvia (Europe), where in 2011 Latvian Street Workout Association organized Latvian Pull-Up Day for the first time. As they say on their official website:

“It was a one day pull-up competition in 50 cities of Latvia with super-final live on TV at the end of the day. This event collected more than 3000 participants and gained huge attention among the whole society. After the success in first year, event in year 2013 was organized in 60 cities and collected around 8000 participants (1.6% of the economically active population in Latvia) together making more than 70 000 pull-ups within one day.”

It seems that calisthenics is a very popular sport in Latvia and they enjoy doing it a lot which is great. Fortunately, it went further than this and within couple of years it became a worldwide movement. It is a spectacular competition where the greatest athletes from all over the place gather to compete and inspire others. Romania held one for itself in Timișoara [Romania], where I also attended, on the 9th of September 2017.

The event was a lot more complex than this as you will notice by reading the whole article. Congratulations to Romeo for successfully organizing the entire event.

Why Pullups?

“The Pull-Up exercise is good measurement of one’s physical condition, as the person uses only its body weight for exercising. It is a natural and non-injuring movement, which can be performed by people of all ages, both men and women. The advantage of the Pull-Up exercise lies in possibility to quickly exhaust the physical strength and unload the negative energy by substituting it with positive emotions for the work done.” Source: World Pullup Day Website

IDEA OF THE EVENT

This is not only about performing pullups and winning the crown for being the pullups champion The purpose goes beyond this, as Maris Slezins (the founder of WSWCF) says:

“Simple pull-ups once changed my life completely from negative to positive and they did the same to thousands of people around me after sharing this positive change. Now I believe that simple pull-ups can change, inspire and motivate for better everyone around the world.”

He is right. Pullup Exercises are part of an extremely beautiful sport named calisthenics. Street Workout is also derived from it. I do pullups almost on a daily basis to strengthen my upper body and tone my muscles. I can also say that they changed me entirely from negative to positive, from weak and skinny to strong and muscular. I am an entirely new and better person now.

In September 9 (which is also my birthday) people all around the world gather at the same time to compete and donate money or goods for charity within their country. Everybody has a common purpose, regardless the nationality, age or sex, to promote physical training for a better lifestyle and help other people in need.

Pullup Competition

Together they did 628 pullups where Alex Feher established a new national record of 35. I salute his performance. Let’s watch him in action:

I personally did not compete because my role was to speak about Old School Calisthenic and my training philosophy. I was also busy filming and documenting the event. However, I brought with me two of my friends, calisthenics athletes as well, to compete and support me: Horia and Andrei.

Horia is training the way I do it, with basic calisthenics, based on high-volume training and for more than 2 years now. He developed quite an impressive physique by doing exclusively bodyweight training. His performance was great, managing 23 strict form pullups and attaining the 3rd place in the competition.

Horia

World Pullup Day Champs

Andrei is 17 years old and has been training for several months now. He is more passionate about Free Style, bar-tricks and Street Workout. He will compete as soon as possible in a Street Workout competition, but up until then he challenged himself at World Pullup Day where he smashed 15 clean reps. I am very proud of this young ambitious fellow.

Horia, Adorian and Andrei

When I said that Romeo organized a complex event I wasn’t joking. He invited one of the greatest Street Workout athletes for a workshop and demonstration, Ales Fiser and the Romanian champion, Samuel. I had the occasion of sharing some experiences with them and took some pictures together:

Adorian Moldovan, Samuel and Ales Fiser

We had a lot of fun and to make it even more interesting I attended the Grip Strength Challenge proposed by Florian, who is an arm wrestling champion. I will not bore you with specifics because I attached a video.

It was a very tough challenge and I had to battle with the national fireman champion, Ovidiu. This guy is no joke and strong as hell. We both managed to lift the same, 85 kg, which is pretty impressive for guys that never train specifically for it.

Adorian Moldovan, Ovidiu (the fireman champ)

Adorian Moldovan and Florian Lazar (arm wrestling champ)

My Final Thoughts

I had the chance to speak in front of great athletes, but I only uploaded a short video because I was talking in Romanian. Thanks for listening to me guys!

It was challenging for me to present my methods of training in front of great athletes, especially when the majority of them are more into Free Style and tricks. My style revolves around an old school mindset where I train at my fullest potential using only the most basic exercises. This may be one of the most beautiful part of calisthenics: it may be the same sport, but it can be done very differently from an individual to another.

We all started by doing basic pullups and thus, World Pullup Day can unite us each year to come.

My name is Adorian Moldovan and I want to thank you for reading my article.

Romeo from Strong Romanian Athletes

Thanks Ema Grec for pictures.

I invite you to read the other articles I have published about training and nutrition.

NAVIGATION

Calisthenics Program:

Author Adorian Moldovan

Adorian Moldovan is the founder of Old School Calisthenic, a site dedicated to helping people achieve aesthetic and strong physique through bodyweight training.
His calisthenics programs helped a lot of people transform their bodies.
He is also the author of the programme: High-Volume Calisthenics Workouts.